Art of Scent. Refined Nobility. Packaging design

Background

Art of Scent is a candle and homeware private label range created for Zhongnam South Star (ZSS).

Zhongnam South Star (ZSS) is one of the top 5 Chinese candle and diffuser manufacturers (by US$ turnover), based in Guandong Province. For this I teamed with fragrance expert Ian Middleton from Brand Commander, with whom I’ve worked for over 20 years. Together we’ve been working with ZSS for about 6 years.

We started helping them with new ranges for Tesco, Walmart and ASDA as well as providing creative and account management services for their UK-based clients.

Over the years we’ve developed a strong symbiotic relationship – we’ve helped them grow their UK business by over 680% in the past 5 years.

13% of their $30m revenue comes from their domestic Asian market so in 2017 the factory tasked us to create its own brand: Art Of Scent. The brand is performing strongly, every year they bring up to 6 new ranges to market.

Art of Scent. Spring Summer 2017
Range 1: Refined Nobility

For each season (Spring / Summer & Autumn / Winter) we create and design ranges from scratch – our work is usually driven by a trend forecasting process that helps us deliver product on trend worldwide, along with packaging and design directions.

Each season we design create three new Art of Scent ranges, alongside our work for other clients.

Because we are working with long-term trends – most work is commissioned 2 years ahead of delivery – our expertise and deep knowledge of the market helps deliver new ranges and new lines that always perform beyond expectations.

The Result & Potential Opportunities

As already mentioned – for each of the 3 “trends” – for each client, we design 2 options.

One is selected for production and sampling, the other, having not been selected, is available as an “off the shelf” fully designed and configured range which we’d be willing to amend and sell onto any manufacturers in the homeware (and or any other product area should you wish to apply the design to your product which we could do for you).

Your question as a manufacturer may therefore be: “why would I want to buy this range design when it didn’t go through to production?” The answer is:

The reason it wasn’t selected wasn’t because it didn’t fulfil the trend options, but that what is purchased by buyers will be dependant on their personal tastes and refections of the market area of the globe that sales would be generated, plus the sales channel/ client it would be sold through.

For instance, this range design would perhaps be better for Next but not Asda. It would probably do well in Japan but not as well in mainland China, etc. In fact, this range design would possibly be far better suited to the independent sector than to multiples.

Why this would be a good purchase:

This entire range has been fully sampled and created and is ready to buy off the shelf – and represents an opportunity to buy a quality on-brief “private label” design solution. It can be easily and cost-effectively modified to your brand in a matter of weeks to go straight into production.

I’ve already presented this range at the manufacturers in China to the head buyers of a number of top 4 UK multiples who are very, very interested in it. However, no commitment in terms of SUKs has yet been made so it remains a range ready to Private Label to any brand.

If as a Private label you’d be interested in purchasing the range we would include:
1) specifications for glass, fragrances that have already been sourced and are available for purchase as part of the deal (again, all exactly on trend),
2)repro ready packaging designs already at repro stage with box cutter guides,
3) as well as any back-end design and manufacturing support that you’d need to create a brand/range at a very cost effective rate.

If you’d like to know more, please email or phone me.